Wednesday, 10 September 2008

Thanks to The Register for reminding us that Today is not Hadron Collider Day and cutting through the hype and FUD generated by the rest of the press today. Yes, today CERN reached a significant milestone with the Large Hadron Collider by running the first beam of protons full circle but no collisions are planned for the next few months yet. That's because to have a collision, you need two beams of proton: one going clockwise, the other one going anti-clockwise. And even then, the world will not end because what the HLC will produce happens all the time in nature. The difference is that the HLC will do it under controlled conditions. If you are not convinced, you can always check that the world hasn't been destroyed by visiting this handy status page.